ALARM Scotland seminar

Tanya Gordon

Tanya is an experienced litigator and has over 30 years of experience representing clients in the Court of Session and the Sheriff Courts. She also provides pre-litigation advice and ad-hoc guidance to clients in non-litigated matters. Tanya’s practice focusses on both insured and self-insured public sector bodies and organisations with a caseload consisting solely of high-value and high-profile matters. As well as dealing with a wide range of personal injury and catastrophic claims arising from road traffic, public liability and employers liability accidents, Tanya acted as the principal solicitor on behalf of a number of clients at the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry.

She is also frequently instructed by both insurers and self-insured organisations in respect of historical and recent abuse claims. Tanya provides pragmatic and commercial legal advice in respect of such claims given their nature and the need for sensitive handling.

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Russell Heppleston

Risk Manager, National Audit Office

Russell is a Risk Manager for the Financial and Risk Management Insights team at the NAO. He joined the NAO in 2021 as a risk manager and leads on the NAO’s insight work on risk and resilience. He has nearly 20 years’ experience working in Public Sector, specialising in internal assurance, risk management and governance. He is a Chartered Internal Audit Leader (QIAL) and Certified Risk Manager (CMIRM).

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Nicola Hughes

Unit Head – Contributions, Finance and Business Management, Scottish Government

For over 12 years, Nicola has worked in various child-focused practitioner, policy and leadership roles in local government, third sector and national government. She has worked with care experienced children and families, as well as those affected by poverty and discrimination. From 2017, she led a multi-disciplinary team within Save The Children to design and deliver national programmes in schools, communities and the home to further the wellbeing and educational attainment of children. Moving to Scottish Government in early 2020, she has led programmes of work to support public authorities to further realise the rights of children in Scotland, and now, work with in-care providers to deliver financial and non-financial redress for survivors of historical childhood abuse.  

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Ruth Kydd

Insurance Manager, City of Edinburgh Council

Ruth started working in insurance in 2004, and has worked in insurance with local government since 2015. Her current role is Insurance Manager for the City of Edinburgh Council and is a committee member of the ALARM Scotland Group.

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Gillian Nixon

Unit Head – Redress Operations, Scottish Government

I have worked in National Government roles for over 15 years with extensive experience in operational case work delivery. I have led case work teams in various divisions of Asylum and Immigration Operations, including Asylum Casework for unaccompanied minors and potential victims of trafficking. I joined the Redress Division of the Scottish Government in 2021, heading up the operational delivery of Scotland’s Redress Scheme.

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Emily Stanyon

Senior Analyst, National Audit Office

Emily is a Senior Financial and Risk Management Analyst at the National Audit Office, working within the Financial and Risk management insights team. Prior to the NAO, Emily worked as a Technology Risk Consultant within the Risk Advisory service line.

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Alan Thompson

Motor Fleet Risk Consultant, Zurich Resilience Solutions

Before joining ZRS, I spent over 35 years within law enforcement working within the roads policing function, homicide and serious multi agency investigations. For the last eight years I was the lead investigator and manager of the road death investigation team. This provided me with a unique insight into road collisions, their causes, and opportunities to reduce them. During my career I developed an interest in people development leading me to become a qualified police trainer working in such diverse areas as criminal, company and road legislation and practice. As I moved into a new career, I became the performance training manager for two collaborating forces and developed my knowledge of collision causation, driver behaviour and the various ways to manage driver risk.
Having left the police world I moved into consultancy with Gallagher Bassett spending the next five years developing and delivering fleet interventions to improve safety, inform underwriting and reduce loss.

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Alison Tyler

Partner, Clyde & Co LLP

Alison is a Partner in our Edinburgh office, specialising in representing insurer, commercial and public sector clients in large loss claims. Having worked predominantly with public sector clients throughout her career, Alison has gained in-depth knowledge of the processes, policies and procedures involved in defending claims for public bodies. She regularly works in partnership with in-house legal teams and has a keen understanding of their approach to litigation.

Alison has a broad practice with a focus on personal injury work and judicial review/public law work, mainly in the Court of Session and All Scotland Personal Injury Court.

Alison is an experienced legal trainer, having provided training to insurer clients and local authorities on both substantive and procedural elements of Scots law.

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